About Me

Monday, June 18, 2012

A Man in Chains

It is said that, when he was a young man,Lincoln once saw slaves in chainsand that the sight shaped his outlook;whether the story is anecdotal or notit stands to reason that a man of wisdomwould see things in such a way,a way in which he placed himself in the placeof others and shuddered at the feeling.

Once I knew a man in chains,though they were not made of iron,they bound him as surely as any slaveto the mercy of a limited spacein which slight movement was possible;and, barring a miracle, they would never breakonly grow tighter and the space more limiteduntil they had strangled life away.

Learning to live with chains cannot be easy,those gradual limitations ever reaching,the legs, the arms and the fingers,the creeping agony of not pain but frustration;the acknowledgment of loss despite the fighteach motion less until motion is deniedand physical dignity becomes a lost memorythat only wisdom can overcome.

And such wisdom is never easily learned;forced upon us unwillingly, unwittinglyso many of us would reject itand accept the bitterness and live in hate;to live in love and acceptance is the harder choice,the path stony, the nettles and thistles tearingpieces of the soul until you would imaginethat the soul was somehow compromised.

This was not the case of the man in chains,his soul's choice was to floweramidst the weeds, waste and stone,to blossom, to smooth, to soften the desolationand those of us who came upon thiscould only stare in wonderat the difference one man could make;but we only excused our inactivity.

I recalled Lincoln sickened, seeing the slaves,and my heart was broken at the thought,yet I could almost understand a transcendencewhich creates such men out of dust, out of toilthat chains do not detract from their essence,that their chains define us and our weaknesses;it is to our sorrow that they are called beyondbut a joy that they leave us such gifts.